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Friday, February 4, 2011

Today at the Awards Ceremony of the 40th International Film Festival Rotterdam, three debut films were granted Tiger Awards. They were The Journals of Musan by Park Jung-Bum, Finisterrae by Sergio Caballero and Eternity by Sivaroj Kongsakul.

The Return of the Tiger Award was shared by Oki’s Movie by Hong Sang-Soo and Club Zeus by David Verbeek.

Les amours imaginaires (Heartbeats) by Canadian director Xavier Dolan won the MovieSquad IFFR Award, which was announced by the young people’s jury of IFFR. Dolan was a winner last year of this same Award for his debut film J’ai tué ma mere (I Killed My Mother).

[UPDATE] The Canadian film Incendies by Denis Villeneuve won the public prize on Saturday. It is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards. It finished ahead of another Foreign Language nominee, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Biutiful. In third place was King of Devil's Island by Marius Holst, followed by Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan. The prize for the most popular film went to If the Seed Doesn't Die by Sinisa Dragin. The highest-scoring film in competition was by Vladimir Kott's Громозека (Gromozeka).
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Winners Tiger Awards and Return of the Tiger Award

During the IFFR 2010 Awards Ceremony on Friday, February 4,
2011 in the Oude Luxor Theater, the winning films of the 40th
International Film Festival Rotterdam were announced. The Tiger Awards
Ceremony included a solo performance by Sonic Youth-front man Lee
Ranaldo, member of the Tiger Awards Jury.

On the occasion of IFFR’s 40th jubilee edition, the one-off and shared Return of the Tiger Award went to Oki’s Movieby Hong Sang-Soo (South Korea) and Club Zeusby David Verbeek (Netherlands/China).

On Saturday February 5th, the IFFR 2011 UPC Audience Award and the
Dioraphte Award for Best Hubert Bals Fund Supported Film will be
announced.
Tiger Awards
Fourteen first or second films competed in the 2011 Tiger Awards
Competition. The Jury consisted of Lucrecia Martel, filmmaker,
scriptwriter and film producer (Argentina); Sandra den Hamer, director
of the EYE Film Institute Netherlands and former IFFR director;
filmmaker Andrei Ujica (Romania); Wisit Sasanatieng, filmmaker
(Thailand) and Lee Ranaldo, vocalist, guitarist, composer and co-founder
of noise rock band Sonic Youth (USA). Each Tiger Award comes with a
prize of Euro 15,000 for the filmmaker.

This edition, the Tiger Awards Competition is supported by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.

The jury statements on the Tiger Award winning films:Finisterraeby Sergio Caballero (Spain, 2010)
‘The outsider in this competition. Searching for the boundaries in this
festival, for the edgy, the off-beat. Best animal performances in a
film. The ghost of this competition.’Eternityby Sivaroj Kongsakul (Thailand, 2010)
‘With a great sense of cinematic duration, this film builds its own
universe, finding its own pacing, so consistently, to tell its
particular story. A film that seems on the surface to be about death but
which is really about love, a beautiful and delicate love story.’
Eternity is supported by IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund.The Journals of Musan by Park Jung-Bum (South Korea, 2010)
‘A strongly constructed narrative. A survivor’s story. Throughout the
film the character, immersed in an ethical disorientation, keeps a
constant demeanor. A mature debut film for a new director. This social
drama provides us with another dimension or perspective on the Korean
situation.’

Return of the Tiger Award
The Return of the Tiger program will be accompanied by a one-off award,
the Return of the Tiger Award. The fifteen directors of the fourteen
films competing in the Tiger Awards Competition 2011 were asked to
decide together on the winner of this unique award, worth € 5,000.
The program and the Return of the Tiger Award are intended as a gesture
of appreciation towards those filmmakers who have taken the first steps
of their careers on the international stage at the Rotterdam festival,
and as a token of the festival’s ongoing support for these filmmakers.

The joint decision resulted in a shared Return of the Tiger Award for:Oki’s Movie by Hong Sang-Soo (South Korea, 2010) and Club Zeusby David Verbeek (Netherlands/China, 2011)

Hong Sang-Soo won a Tiger Award in 1997 for his feature debut The Day a
Pig Fell Into the Well. David Verbeek’s second feature film Shanghai
Trance was nominated for a Tiger Award in 2008. Club Zeus will be
released April/May 2011 in Dutch art houses by Cinema Delicatessen.

NETPAC AwardThe NETPAC Jury (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema), consisting
of Jury Chair Ratna Sarumpaet (Indonesa), Katayoon Shababi (Iran,
Director Sheherazad Media International) and Zhang Xian-min (China, a.o.
Director of the Indie Cinema Fund) decided to give two films the NETPAC
Award 2011 for Best Asian film in the IFFR 2011:Black Blood by Zhang Miaoyan (China/France, 2011)
‘A simple and at the same time powerful film, complete in its details,
that brings you to the world in which people live by themselves.’Black Blood is supported by the Hubert Bals Fund.The Day I Disappeared by Atousa Bandeh Ghiasabadi (Netherlands/Iran, 2011)
‘The visual and sonic poetry recalls us the best that cinema can offer. Contemplative and shining.’FIPRESCI Award
The Jury of the international association of film critics FIPRESCI
(Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique), consisting
of Jury Chair Chris Fujiwara (Japan, Insanemute.com), Christoph Huber
(Austria, Die Presse), Adrian Martin (Australia, a.o. LOLA and
Rouge.com), Charles Tesson (France, Cahiers du cinéma) and Ronald Rovers
(de Filmkrant) gives the Rotterdam FIPRESCI Award 2011 to:The Journals of Musan by Park Jung-Bum (South Korea, 2010)
‘The FIPRESCI jury gives its award to a film that vividly portrays the
experience of an outsider. The film is organic and all of a piece,
showing confident, accomplished filmmaking.’
The FIPRESCI Jury chose the winner among the fourteen films selected for the Tiger Awards Competition 2011.

KNF Award
The Jury of the circle of Dutch film journalists KNF (Kring van
Nederlandse Filmjournalisten), consisting of Jury Chair Jeroen Stout
(NTR), Dana Linssen (de Filmkrant), Gawie Keijzer (De Groene),
Clementine van Wijngaarden (VARAgids) and Laura van Zuijlen (Limboland),
has given the KNF Award to:Winter Vacation by Li Hongqi (China, 2010)
‘In reviewing the films eligible for this prize, the jury of the Dutch
Film Critics have been pleasantly surprised by the apparent ending of
the reign of realism in art house cinema. During the last couple of
years this style has become increasingly contrived, rather like a cheap
trick. But during this festival poetry has come to the fore once more,
for instance in F.J. Ossangs lyrical, self-conscious Dharma Guns and
David Dusa’s haunting Fleurs du Mal. And poetry is also central to the
winner of the Dutch Film Critics award. It is a film that is sober in
its imagery, but by using sound, dialogue, rhythm in the montage and
humour in the script the film that the director has crafted finally
transcends reality and turns the boring daily routine of a small
Mongolian town into something astonishingly beautiful.’
Winter Vacation is supported by IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund.

The KNF Jury has chosen its winner among films in Rotterdam 2011
official selection that have not yet been acquired for Dutch
distribution. To the KNF Award a grant is attached for subtitling the
film, sponsored by Holland Subtitling. The Award of the KNF is meant to
promote the acquisition for distribution within The Netherlands.

Tiger Awards for Short Films, EFA Nomination and New Arrivals AwardMonday January 31, Nicolas Provost’s Stardust (Belgium), Nathaniel
Dorsky’s Pastourelle (USA) and Natasha Mendonca’s Jan Villa (USA/India)
were awarded the three equal Rotterdam Tiger Awards for Short Films
2011. Alberto De Michele’s I Lupi (The Wolves, Italy) took the Rotterdam
Short Film Nomination for the European Film Awards 2011. The New
Arrivals Award went to Silent Things by Rob Brown (UK).

The seventh Rotterdam Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films
comprises twenty-eight films, ranging in length from six to fifty-two
minutes. For its Jury the IFFR welcomed Fiona Tan, an artist known for
her audiovisual installations, films and photographic works (The
Netherlands), Anocha Suwichakornpong, filmmaker and Tiger Award winner
for Mundane History (Thailand) and Thom Andersen, filmmaker, film critic
and lecturer (USA). The Jury handed out the three equal Tiger Awards
for Short Film (3,000 Euros) to the winning filmmakers during the VPRO
Late Night Talk Show in Rotterdam.

The Rotterdam Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films is supported by the City Marketing Office Rotterdam.MovieSquad AwardLes amours imaginaires (Xavier Dolan, Canada, 2010) has won the
MovieSquad IFFR Award, which was announced by the young people’s jury of
the International Film Festival Rotterdam February 3 during the
MovieSquad Award Ceremony. Dolan won the same Award last year for his
debut film J’ai tué ma mere.

The MovieSquad jury consisted of 5 members aged 15 to 18 years: Rutger
van Loo (16), Johann Schuur (18), Joren Molter (17), Eveline de Haan
(15) and Wouter van der Vaart (17). The MovieSquad Award includes €
2,000 to spend on the promotion of the film among young people in the
Netherlands. Besides this the film has a chance to be programmed in one
of the film educational programmes of EYE.

MovieSquad IFFR is an initiative of EYE Film Institute Netherlands in
cooperation with the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

ARTE France Cinéma and Eurimages AwardsThe 28th CineMart, co-production market of the International Film
Festival Rotterdam concluded today, Wednesday February 2 in Rotterdam,
with the announcement of the two awards for best CineMart Projects 2011
as chosen by the Jury consisting of Rémi Burah (General Secretary of
ARTE France Cinéma), Peter Gustaffson (Swedish Television and Board
Member of Eurimages) and Susanne Marian (Essential Filmproduktion,
Germany). Touch Me Not by Adina Pintilie (Romania/France) wins the Arte
France Cinéma Award and Kid by Fien Troch (Belgium/Netherlands) takes
the Eurimages Award. The Jury gave a Special Mention to A Spell to Ward
of the Darkness by Ben Russell & Ben Rivers (Germany/France).